We're on holiday in France – three families, plus some extra children – and there are, to my horror, games. On Day 1, everybody is obliged to pick out of a hat the name of a person, a location and an object. One is meant to contrive a scenario where one can plausibly hand the object to one's selected victim in the appropriate location, thereby killing them.

Needless to say, this was not my idea. I've quietly renounced my assignation to kill a seven-year-old child by giving him a lemon, on the grounds that it will be unrewarding. But I still can't relax in the paranoid atmosphere. No one will touch a passed plate at lunch. Fortunately, I'd been charged with choosing all 14 objects for the hat. I know it's safe to accept a towel, and it is my intention neither to kill nor to be killed.

There is also a mandatory ping-pong tournament. The draw, organised by the middle one, is complex. And I've gone deaf from the pool. My ears gurgle and ring all day, and the sharp reduction in hearing increases my suspicion that people are saying unkind things about me, possibly in French.

Although technically only a Group C qualifier, the ping-pong game between me and my wife has been earmarked as a showcase match, with an 8pm kick-off, on the grounds that, whatever happens, it will be worth watching. I am determined not to lose. My wife, although terrible at ping-pong, has a marked psychological advantage over me in all forms of competition. She tends not just to beat me at things, but to humiliate me.

I hang around by the table, watching the better players. I practise with the eldest one, hitting the ball progressively faster and lower, learning to anticipate spin. After half an hour of playing in silence, he pauses to say something, but I don't catch it.

"What?" I say, offering my less deaf ear.

"You're not good," he says.

At 8pm everyone is waiting at the ping-pong table: Jack, at 17, the favourite; his granny, already through to the quarterfinals; my children; the seven-year-old I have secretly declined to kill; his parents.

My wife takes her place opposite me and we knock up. It becomes clear she intends to play while holding a full glass of white wine. Good, I think: she's not taking it seriously. The glass, and possibly the wine, impact on her serve, but she still manages to take the first point, and the second. I catch up on my serve, but then lose four points in succession, swatting at thin air. The middle one, who is keeping score, snorts derisively.

"It's not his fault," my wife says. "He's all unbalanced from his deaf ears. Whoops!" She drops the ball, then bangs her head on the underside of the table while scrabbling around for it. Then she gets up, glasses askew, takes a sip of wine and beats me 21-11. Afterwards I go to bed to think about things for a long time.

By the next afternoon I have recovered from the humiliation. Ping-pong, I think, is just another of those games I must never play my wife at, along with tennis and gin rummy. I'm preoccupied, in any case: I've been told to defrost a lasagne, but I can't work the French microwave. Meanwhile, Jack's granny, fresh from her quarterfinal victory, starts asking me questions about some app on her phone. I can't really hear her.

"I don't know," I say, jabbing at the button with the snowflake on it. The lasagne stays frozen. Jack's granny says something indecipherable but imploring, and I take the phone from her. I don't even know what app she's talking about. She whispers in my bad ear, and I lean close to catch the words.